In the process of shipping one or more articles from one location to another, a packer typically places some type of dunnage material in a shipping container, such as a cardboard box, along with the article or articles to be shipped. The dunnage material partially or completely fills the empty space or void volume around the articles in the container. By filling the void volume, the dunnage prevents or minimizes movement of the articles that might lead to damage during the shipment process. The dunnage also can perform blocking, bracing, or cushioning functions. Some commonly used dunnage materials are plastic foam peanuts, plastic bubble pack, air bags and converted paper dunnage material.
A supply of dunnage material can be provided to the packer in advance, or the dunnage material can be produced as it is needed. Low volume applications typically have used dunnage materials such as plastic foam peanuts and manually-crumpled newspaper. Plastic foam peanuts are messy and occupy the same volume when being stored as when being used. Crumpled newspaper also is messy and requires the packer to manually crumple the newspaper. Alternatively, a dunnage conversion machine can be used to convert a supply of stock material, such as a roll or stack of paper, into a lower density dunnage product as it is needed by the packer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,676,589 discloses a dunnage conversion machine that converts a continuous sheet of paper into a crumpled dunnage product.